The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry

The global menace of uranium

Uranium – the ‘demon metal’ that threatens us all, Ecologist, Chris Busby, 1st January 2014 Ingested Uranium is linked with health impacts far greater than is explained by orthodox risk models. Chris Busby explains how the ‘demon metal’ does its damage – and why the nuclear industry is desperate to hide the truth. I am going to ramble about a bit here, but it’s a bit of a rambling tale, which I hope will come together at the end………

Fallujah – shake, bake, irradiate In 2009 I helped organize the first study of cancer and infant mortality in Fallujah Iraq – a paper which has now had 27,000 accesses and 18,000 downloads from the journal website and has been something of a phenomenon in the media (though not of course the BBC).

The results showed an enormous increase in cancer, and this was most clear for in children (0-14) where the rate was 12.6 times the expected and in leukemia in young adults 0-34 where the rate was 38 times the expected.

Now these are pretty astonishing findings. The biggest leukemia increase in Hiroshima was about 17-fold, and this was ascribed to radiation exposures. But whatever caused this in Fallujah, also increased rates of congenital defects in the newborn and altered the sex ratio at birth.

The sex ratio, the number of boys born per 1000 girls, fell from 1050 to about 800, a signal of genetic damage. We looked for the cause of this genetic damage in the hair of the mothers of the birth defect children and found a huge excess of Uranium. This result also caused a splash, with 16,000 accesses to the paper since its publication in 2011.

Uranium weapons cause genetic damage Of course, these Fallujah studies just confirmed what the Iraqi doctors had been saying ever since Gulf War 1 when the US vapourised about 350 tons of the stuff over the Iraqi population. Uranium weapons were causing the genetic damage.

The UK Gulf veterans are now in their 40s and are beginning to develop cancer. There are studies showing that US veterans have had children with birth defects. I have been involved in a number of Gulf war cancer cases in Ministry of Defence Pensions appeals, and notably in a coroner inquest in 2009 into the death of Gulf Veteran Stuart Dyson.

Bomb test veterans It is not only the Gulf veterans that were exposed to Uranium. The atmospheric nuclear tests involved huge bombs that were constructed entirely of Uranium.

The UK Grapple Y 3 megaton test on Christmas Island in 1958 (video here~ 1 minute) involved a 4 ton lump of the stuff that was atomized by the explosion and created a black rain of Uranium oxide nanoparticles that fell from the sky (along with fish that had been sucked from the sea into the cloud).

The nuclear test veterans have suffered all the same effects: cancers and a whole range of health problems. And birth defects in the children. I know about the birth defects as a result of an epidemiological study I carried out with Mireille de Messieres in 2007. This showed a 9-fold excess risk of a congenital defect in the children and an 8- fold excess in the grandchildren.

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In the words of CRIIRAD
“The CRIIRAD did not detect uranium, but that does not mean there was none.”…

they said this as well
“Bruno Chareyron then suggested interviewing some eye-witnesses, some former soldiers. That is what we had already done by internet. During our investigation, in fact, some US veterans who had been at Forward Base Falcon sent us their testimonies through a reliable friend. They spoke briefly – not elaborating, since they were afraid – but categorically: yes, there were indeed Depleted Uranium weapons stocked there, and they did explode. That probably explains the flaming brands that can be seen spurting up in the videos of some explosions. That explains above all the haste in which the terrain where the fire had raged was completely cleared and raked.”…

Also, as Busby is being targetted by GCHQ and friends because of the UK Testveteran case.. and funny enough CRIIRAD have something to say about that too!!

““…The dismissal of Bruno Barrillot by Flosse government is a bad action against all those and all those in Polynesia and the world are fighting for truth and justice the victims of nuclear tests. “…””

The global movement for a clean non nuclear future – theme for March 2015

The nuclear lobby, the corporate establishment, governments and the mainstream media just don’t “get it”. But the world is moving away from top-down, centrally organised, vertically structured systems. Nuclear power, even that last ditch hope, “little” nuclear reactors – all are part of the out-dated systems.

There’s still a place for some centralised systems, with renewable energy transported by the grid. But along with the now horizontally organised communications – net-working across the world, grow the flexible and versatile systems of decentralised electricity generation.

Above all – the ever more rapid spread of ideas and campaigns. Some, we know, are harmful campaigns. But the movement for clean energy is unstoppable – spreading as it does from person to person – not relying on organisation by authorities and experts.

Indigenous campaigns lead the way – whether it be in America, Australia, Malaysia – indigenous peoples have already shown how they can slow down, even stop, the nuclear juggernaut.